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Over the past couple of years, businesses and individuals alike have learned to do more with less. For manufacturers, in many cases, that has been a good thing.
The sector was having a hard time getting with the times. Instead of lean, many manufacturers were bloated. Instead of nimble, they were weighed down.
That manufacturers have learned to not only survive during a recession, but actually grow while employing fewer and fewer people, is borne out by the numbers.
In the third quarter, manufacturing productivity nationwide increased 0.6 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those productivity gains are simply the latest in a sustained trend of such increases and are the result of manufacturers increasing output by 4.2 percent while increasing the number of employee hours worked by 3.6 percent.
If it appears as if those numbers are approaching some kind of tipping point, they are. Productivity was up in the second quarter of 2009, too. But that was the result of a 1.5-percent decline in output being offset by a whopping 7.6-percent decline in hours worked.
Jack Healy, director of operations at the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership in Worcester, said the sector seems to be flattening out and preparing for growth, but it’ll be a long, slow process.
Healy said manufacturing employment in Massachusetts has held steady at about 254,000 workers since June.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this kind of bottoming out in years. Month after month for years we were seeing decreases,” Healy said.
Manufacturing employed about 305,000 people in 2005, Healy noted.
It wasn’t easy, but manufacturers seem to have stopped the bleeding. And notoriously stubborn manufacturers aren’t about to spoil it for themselves.
“We’ve learned how to do more business with less people, and business is profitable. Now, if you hire more people, you’ll be less profitable,” Healy explained.
And while sales increases may be driving newfound profitability now, projecting growth is far too uncertain a game to justify any significant hiring. For the time being, more manufacturers may be profitable, but none feel particularly secure.
So sales are being closed. Orders and revenue are coming in. Is it time to hire?
No, says Healy. Not yet.
Instead, manufacturers will ask employees to be even more productive, albeit at time-and-a-half.
“If I’m going to have more business, I’m not going to bring somebody in and do training. What I’m going to do is overtime,” Healy said.
But that’ll only get manufacturers so far. This is 2010, not 1910.
Manufacturers will have to begin hiring in the next couple of years. But don’t expect the workforce to grow by leaps and bounds.
“When they do start hiring back — and I’m quite sure they will — they will be hiring fewer people,” said Carol King, director of early career and college awareness at Quinsigamond Community College and a project director for the Massachusetts Technology Education/Engineering Colla-borative (Mass-TEC).
On top of that, the proportion of Baby Boomers working in manufacturing is very high, and they won’t be replaced person-for-person.
Still, King estimated that the state’s manufacturing sector will need to hire 100,000 people in the next 10 years.
While that projection is positive, it still presents a problem. Where will the qualified candidates come from?
Manufacturing isn’t like it was when all those Baby Boomers were starting out. Now entry-level employees need basic engineering skills, prior training in manufacturing technology, electronics or even electromechanical engineering skills.
The Mass-TEC project at QCC has seen enrollment in those programs grow by 60 percent in the last three years as the school has forged cooperative relationships with area manufacturers.
But QCC is only one school. It can’t provide 100,000 qualified employees in the next decade all by itself.
“Will we have enough people to put into these jobs? I don’t know,” King said. “I think we’re better off than we were three years ago.”
Three years from now, the story might be less positive.
“We have a problem with our workforce,” Healy said. “We don’t have a real mechanism for getting people trained and we have a large incumbent worker population where 50 percent have less than a college education.”
That’s the Baby Boom generation King also worries about. Manufacturers don’t have the time or money to train their replacements from the ground up. Instead, modern manufacturing requires entry-level employees to arrive with skills and knowledge.
“There are people looking for jobs today and they’re not qualified,” Healy said. “We’ve been fortunate in the Worcester area that we have Worcester Technical High School, Quinsigamond and WPI.”
Mass MEP uses WPI for advanced manufacturing training. That should give you some idea of the high level of skill today’s manufacturing demands.
“When they come out of there, they’re qualified, and I honestly think that’s the solution for the future,” Healy said.
Matthew L. Brown is a freelance writer based in Connecticut. He can be reached at mlbrown76@hotmail.com.
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